Case study: Forging new frontiers in conferencing
Dr Orkun Soyer of the University's Systems Biology research theme had a vision for a new type of conference based on past experiences while working at some of Europe's leading research centres.
This new kind of conference would be designed to foster interdisciplinary research by encouraging interraction between delegates, speakers, and organisers in a much less formalised setting than is usual, whilst still providing an organised schedule of presentations and posters.
Young career academics would be able to network and share ideas with established leaders in their fields of research. This sense of interraction and accessibility would hopefully foster the creation of new research relationships across multiple institutions and disciplines, and pave the way to the generation of exciting new research projects.
In order to successfully allow informal interraction as well as formal presentations the conference would have to be even more coordinated than usual. The venue would also have to be particularly sympathetic to the flexible demands of both formal presentation space, informal breakout areas, poster display space, catering, and general ambience.
How RKT helped
Dr Soyer approached the Research & Knowledge Transfer office with the idea for the conference in January 2010. Over the course of the next 9 months, members of staff from RKT, coordinated by Maggie Smith from the Project Support team, were involved heavily with almost every aspect of organising the conference, including:
- Working with the venue team and planning logistics of the entire event, ensuring all equipment and needs were catered for
- Booking accommodation and local travel for invited speakers and guests
- Organising logistics of invited speakers' talks, posters, and expenses
- Working with an external AV contractor to produce films of key presentations
- Arranging the conference's gala dinner
- Working with an external delegate management firm to offer an easy online payment system
- Arranging transport throughout
- Managing the event budget
- General liaison and information gathering with all delegates, including answering queries and acting on requests during the conference itself
- Working with the University's Systems Biology research theme, College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, and department of Biosciences to secure underwritten costs
- Building and maintaining a conference website
- Co-ordinating design and content of the brochure and branding of the event
- Arranging literature from sponsors for display
The conference took place from 21-24 September 2010 at the University's Reed Hall venue, and was attended by over 70 delegates representing 31 institutions and drawn from across 10 countries.
Feedback from delegates has been universally positive, with several of them citing Frontiers 2010 as the best organised and catered conference they had ever attended. In fact the conference was so successful and well received that the organising panel, including academics from the University of Oxford and Dukes University as well as Exeter, are now planning to make Frontiers a biannual event.
When we first came up with the idea of Frontiers 2010 it was quite scary thinking about how we would implement all the unique structural features we aspired to. Working with the members of RKT, and in particular Maggie Smith, Andy Richards, , Pete Hodges, and made all our worries evaporate into thin air. The preparations up to the meeting and the actual event ran so smoothly, it was simply great.
I think my feelings also resonated with the delegates as many of them commented that Frontiers 2010 was the best catered and organised event they had attended.
I fell privileged to have worked with RKT and look forward to organising many more first class meetings with them in the future.
Dr Orkun Soyer
